Published at 23rd of January 2024 7:31 am

Chapter 32: The House of Fright

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Hiding Curses came easy to me.

I should have expected that. I’d grown used to disguising my malice from the Nightlords with a placid face and pretty words. A Curse was no little than hateful intentions made manifest, so all I had to do was wrap it up in a Veil of insincere words and empty reassurances. Both spells used my Tonalli and thus could work in tandem.

“I am impressed, my son,” Mother complimented me as I presented her with my latest work: a translucent feather. Were I not holding it in my hand, I would not even see it. “It took me years to achieve a similar result.”

It felt strange to receive a compliment from Mother. I knew that I should shrug off her opinion—the woman had abandoned me after all—but her words filled my heart with pride anyway. I supposed a small part of me still yearned for her praise and attention. Or perhaps I simply appreciated having my hard-earned skills recognized by an experienced sorcerer.

“Practice makes perfect,” I replied before applying the feather to one of our captive Burned Men. The invisible feather meshed with the undead’s shadow without leaving a trace. It took me using the Gaze to confirm my Curse stuck to its target; a spell that none of my enemies could access. “Is this good enough to fool the Nightlords?”

“More than enough.” Mother examined the wall of pinned Burned Men. Half of them were trapped in a deep trance, their minds possessing helpless bodies in the living world. “All that remains is for you to plant the feathers on the corpses above. This will trigger your Haunt and befoul the entire mountain.”

A prospect I relished, but one that would still require some planning.

“Making the trip to Smoke Mountain in my Tonalli form back and forth will take me hours,” I warned Mother. “I will have to skip my next trip to the Underworld.”

“That won’t be a problem. You have all the tools required to cast your Haunt spell now.” A polite way to say I would have plenty of corpses to corrupt and bury. “Remember to repeat the same Curse with all the feathers you place. Choose something simple. The more likely the outcome you seek and the more you fervently wish for it, the easier your task.”

My Curse would be simple enough: I would wish for the Nightlords’ ritual to turn back against them, for the power they sought to do them harm, for the threads of their magic to unravel. That was my sincerest wish.

Moreover, I suspected that another voice would pray for the same result during the New Fire Ceremony. The same one that the Nightlords dared to leech power from. If that entity would lend my Curse its strength, the vampires would soon learn the meaning of regret.

A pity I couldn’t cast spells through a Ridden host. That would have made my life so much easier. I observed the wall of Burned Men and began to wonder how else I could use that spell. Riding my foes would let me see through their eyes and kill with their hands, but there were places no man could easily access. No man was allowed into the Blood Pyramid’s bowels, nor permitted to delve into its terrible secrets.

A mouse, however…

“I have a question,” I asked Mother. “If the Ride spell lets us possess humans, can it allow us to take over animals too? Could I possess a bat or a snake?”

“Of course, but you will quickly find yourself facing a key limitation: you need a target’s name to Ride them.”

I could see how that would prevent me from Riding the first mouse to cross my path. Fortunately, however, I had the world’s largest menagerie at my disposal. “If so, wouldn’t naming an animal myself do the trick?”

“It can, if the animal answers to it.” Mother brushed her hand against a Burned Man’s bones and the words carved into them. “The Ride spell requires a name because it calls the host. Like any Ihiyotl spell, you need to build a connection through words or breath.”

I pondered her words. I was only familiar with the Augury when it came to Ihiyotl-based spells. That one involved catching the Yaotzin’s attention from among all the winds and then concluding a deal with it. Unless I shed blood and provided the correct offering, the wind of chaos would not pay attention to me.

“I think I understand,” I said. “It is akin to singling out a target from among a crowd. If I do not call the beast by a name that it recognizes, they will not understand that I am speaking to them.”

Mother nodded in confirmation. “We humans receive a name at birth, so we learn since infancy to answer to its call. An animal requires training to understand the same.”

That complicated matters. The only animal that came to mind as a valid target for the Ride spell was Itzili, my young feathered tyrant. He was strong and quick, but not especially subtle. A flying bird or a small rodent would serve me better.

I always could have my animal trainers raise specific beasts for me. Or perhaps they’d already taught the prisoners of my menagerie to answer their calls. Either way, it would take time and carry a risk. If a bird from my collection was somehow found dead in a vampire temple after escaping its cage, the Nightlords might suspect something was amiss.

“There is a simpler way to Ride the beasts of the living world,” Mother said after noticing my sullen face. “What do you think is the foundation of magic, my son? The principle that guides all forms of sorcery, nay, the cosmos itself?”

I first thought of the three components of magic: the Tonalli, the Teyolia, and the Ihiyotl. The Parliament of Skulls taught me early that I was required to master all three to become a true sorcerer.

However, Mother mentioned a principle, singular. I could only think of one thing. The words that guided me on the first steps of my journey in Mictlan.

“Sacrifice,” I replied. “You must give before you can obtain anything.”

My answer drew a dry chuckle from Mother. “Why do most sacrifices go unrewarded then?”

Her words were cold, but perhaps not unfounded. Gratitude was a rare thing. Appreciated, yet rarely expected. The Nightlords had shown that clearly enough when they killed Sigrun in spite of her years of unwilling service.

“The powerful rarely need to give anything,” Mother said. “The strong take what they can, not what they must.”

“The dead souls I’ve dealt with all abided by their word, whether mortals or gods,” I argued. “I traded my services for their spells and knowledge. They did not compel me to do their bidding by force, though they could easily have done so.”

Mother remained unconvinced. “Unlike the living, the dead have learned the value of patience. What value is there in making an enemy that may haunt you thirty years from now? We Tlacatecolotl are too few and our services too precious. They cannot alienate us.”

That was quite the cynical take on life. “Not all relationships are built on mutual self-interest, Mother.”

“You are correct, my son: only those with a solid foundation are.” Mother shrugged. “In any case, I shall tell you the answer: the guiding principle of all magic is transfer. Power is like water. It flows and shifts, but never settles on a single shape for long.”

To illustrate her point, Mother moved a hand from her exposed Teyolia to mine. Both of us had feasted on the divine ashes of a long-dead sun. I could feel the same glow within her heart as mine.

“The sun produces light and warmth, which feeds flowers and beasts alike,” Mother explained. “The sun gives them life; and in return, when they die, the living send their Teyolia back to the sun. Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. Power shifts and moves.”

“What do you make of vampires then?” I still shuddered when I recalled the sulfur flame’s boundless appetite. Nothing remained of what it devoured. “All they do is eat.”

“The vampires do not truly destroy those they consume. Their souls keep existing in that gaping pit that the Nightlords call a stomach. I concede their hunger does threaten the continued balance of the universe, but they do not destroy power; they simply hoard it.”

“Do not worry, Iztac,” Eztli once told me when referring to her father, whom she devoured. “He’s still inside me.”

I dared not imagine how many souls languished in a Nightlord’s stomach, considering how long those monsters had haunted the earth. Still, if Mother was right, then extinguishing the sulfur flame might release Lady Sigrun’s soul and that of all the poor women fed to its wicked hunger; if such a thing was even possible.

“To master sorcery, Iztac, you must understand, exploit, and control this flow,” Mother continued. “It is true that in many cases, you must give before you can take; but it is only because you cannot transfer anything without building a connection first. The Ride spell uses a name because it is the easiest way to create such a bridge, but there are other, more intimate ways to achieve the same result. You have already encountered many cases.”

It didn’t take me long to think of one: the thralls of the Nightlords, whose loyalty was engraved onto their very eyes.

“The priests,” I guessed. “The Nightkin enslave their minds and flesh by feeding them their blood.”

“Indeed,” Mother confirmed. “The body’s fluids carry the power of one’s Teyolia, especially the blood; for a sorcerer, this means they become powerful magical vectors. Feeding your blood to another creature will create a one-way bond akin to a debt. You give life, you gain ownership. Enough control will let you see through your target’s eyes, listen through their ears, and even give commands that they cannot disobey.”

So if I feed an animal my blood, then I wouldn’t need their name to Ride them? This might prove difficult in my case considering how mine burned with sunlight, but my mind immediately noticed a worrying detail about this process.

“The Nightlords can see through their priests’ eyes?” I asked.

“The Nightlords cannot Ride a blood-bonded individual, as they lack access to the Land of the Dead Suns, but yes, they can command their thralls and observe the world through their senses from afar.” Mother locked eyes with me; her own were as blue as the priests’ were red. “Whenever you speak to a blood-bonded servant of a Nightlord, remember that their mistress might be listening.”

I’d never been foolish enough to speak my mind in a priest’s vicinity, but there were subtler spies in the palace. Yoloxochitl had fed her blood to many flowers lurking beneath the imperial gardens. If she could listen through them…

Fear not, Iztac. These plants recoil from the sun. You are safe in the daylight. Still, I would avoid speaking in the gardens. They were not as safe of a space as I imagined them to be. Must I worry about wallflowers too now?

“I would be careful if you try to form a blood-bond, Iztac,” Mother warned me. “Such a relationship requires maintenance. You need to feed your target regularly, lest their body purges your blood away like a poison. Most sorcerers can only sustain a handful of pets, human or otherwise.”

“I favor quality over quantity,” I replied. A single mouse would serve me better than a pack of wild dogs. “Are there other risks to forming a blood-bond? A connection works both ways, no?”

“It will if you consume the beast’s blood in return.” Mother stroked her hair, a flicker of amusement flashing in her eyes. “I heard cases of ancient Nahualli couples who fed on each other’s blood to create an unbreakable bond. It rarely ended well. Most became madly obsessed with one another, when the stronger party did not dominate the other.”

I understood how the process worked now. By using mercantile terms, feeding one's blood to another created a bond similar to a debtor and a debtee; exchanging blood, meanwhile, meant sharing a mutual burden. If the flow went only one way, it instead created an ever-stronger form of dependency.

“The vampires feed on blood,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t they become slaves to Nahualli if they fed on their blood?”

Mother shook her head. “The vampire curse perverts everything. A Nightkin possesses a gaping, all-consuming curse in place of their shriveled heart. There is no give and take with a vampire, only the latter. The Nightlords have fed on a thousand sorcerers without becoming a slave to any of them. Consuming their blood, however, means inviting their evil into your veins.”

I found that disappointing, but not unexpected. At least feeding them my sun-powered blood should damage them. “Yet that same evil allows the red-eyed priests to conquer aging.”

“At the cost of their fertility.” Mother scoffed in disdain. “The truth, Iztac, is that the vampire curse consumes their potential to bring new life into the world to sustain itself. All priests are indebted fools who sold out their kind’s future for false prosperity.”

All of the Nightlords’ gifts were poisoned.

“Humans possess the most lifeforce out of all creatures in the world, short of great creatures like the feathered tyrants,” Mother added. “On lesser beasts and plants, the curse’s effects are far more pronounced. They grow fearful of sunlight and gain a thirst for blood. They become the shadows of shadows.”

“I’ve seen that,” I said upon recalling Yoloxochitl’s garden of monstrous flowers. At least this confirmed no possessed mouse would spy on me in the sunlight.

Beyond its use for the Ride spell, Mother’s lesson on the nature of magic helped me recontextualize Lady Sigrun’s magic. If all of a human’s body fluids carried their Teyolia, then it would explain why Seidr required lovemaking to function. It temporarily bound the participants’ heart-fires together. The process happened naturally, but only Nahualli or trained individuals would notice.

“Have you heard of Seidr?” I questioned Mother.

She squinted at me in confusion. She did not recognize the term. “I have not.”

“I met a…” My words died in my throat when I tried to qualify Sigrun. A victim of circumstances? A witch? Her death was too fresh yet, too raw, for me to properly describe her. “A wise woman with access to a strange form of sorcery. A power created from the union of a man and a woman, whether or not they were Nahualli. She used it to preserve her youth by draining the vitality of her partners.”

“Ah yes, you must speak of the Embrace.” I detected a hint of disdain in Mother’s voice. “It is a primitive ritual emulating Ōmeteōtl, the first being. The same way male and female were once one, reuniting these two halves lets a couple tap into a greater source of power.”

Of course Mother would be familiar with all forms of magic. I recalled that Lady Sigrun compared Ōmeteōtl to a figure of her own mythology, Ymir. Much like my people and the Sapa each used different words to name the same things, I guessed other Nahualli practiced Seidr under another name.

“You do not sound impressed,” I noted.

“I am not,” Mother replied. “I will concede that the Embrace has plenty of applications. From what I have heard, the participants can use their shared lifeforce to transfer memories, heal their wounds, or gain cosmic insight.”

Sharing memories? Could Sigrun read the minds of those she slept with? No wonder she became such a powerful spymistress.

“All those things sound beneficial enough,” I said.

“They are, but the Embrace requires the willing cooperation of two participants to unleash its full potential. If you receive a vision, you share this knowledge.” Mother let out a scornful snort. “Why bother deepening a form of magic with such a steep cost when you can achieve the same result on your own?”

I squinted at her. “You could have tried with Father, when he was alive.”

A tense silence hung between us.

“You couldn’t trust him,” I guessed.

“I love your father, but he is not a Nahualli.” Mother looked away at the exit. “He would not have understood. Not until he died.”

The impersonal way she spoke of my father—the very person she Cursed Necahual for life to be with—unnerved me to my core. Mother might say that she loved him, but she still considered him a mere mortal at the end of the day. Someone she could never share her true secrets with.

What did I expect from her? Unconditional love? Mother made it clear that she wouldn’t have helped me had I not proven to be a Tlacatecolotl. Had I been born without powers, she would have left me to the Nightlords. I could tell.

A terrifying, high-pitched screech echoed outside our hideout, loud enough to wake the dead; and it did. The Burned Men grew agitated and began to helplessly struggle against the nails keeping them attached to the stone wall. The ground shook beneath my feet and the stone ceiling cracked above my head.

“A tremor?” I muttered, my body tensing. There were few more dangerous places to hide in than a tunnel in the middle of an earthquake.

“Of a sort.” Seemingly unbothered by the danger ahead, Mother stepped close to our hideout’s exit and discreetly peeked outside. “Azcatlapalli is growing restless.”

I quickly followed her example and waved a Veil to hide ourselves. Indeed, Azcatlapalli was screaming his anger to the heavens. The great bird’s mighty wings wiped up a dust storm in the canyon he oversaw. His talons trampled the ground with enough strength to spread tremors through the ground. His hateful eyes looked left and right, searching for prey. Searching for us.

Was he trying to force us out of hiding with a tantrum? When dust fell from the ceiling and onto my shoulder, I realized he might very well succeed. I quickly activated the Doll spell for safety’s sake. Dark talons of shadows held onto the walls and kept them in place.

“Worry not, my son,” Mother reassured me, though she did nothing to help me in my task. “It will be all over soon.”

True to her words, I did not have to wait for long. Azcatlapalli let out a final growl, a deep cry of anger and disappointment, and then took flight. The whole canyon shook as he soared away from his perch. His immense wingspan cast a dark shadow upon us for several seconds, but the blue light of Tlaloc’s sun soon returned. I gazed upon Azcatlapalli as he flew away towards far off smoldering mountains.

Mad spirits were clearly short on patience.

“This is our chance to slip away,” Mother said as she shifted back into her owl form. “We must not linger. His kind always returns.”

“What of them?” I asked, pointing a shadowy talon at the Burned Men.

“Leave them. The spell will run its course in time.” Mother traded her skin for black feathers and her arms for dark wings. “They have served their purpose.”

A minute later, we both flew away out of the canyon as twin owls of shadow. My carrying frame and its contents weighed heavily on my back. Searing rains of cinders flowed over my plumage like water on a fish’s scales. Thankfully, Azcatlapalli had flown in another direction than ours. He was so large I could still see his shadow in the distance, soaring above the dead lands.

“What if he ambushes us again?” I asked, my beak coughing ashes.

“That won’t be an issue if we can reach the House of Fright tonight,” Mother replied. “The Burned Men and their dead gods alike do not encroach on its borders.”

It said something about Tlalocan when Mother considered an ancient realm of nightmares safer than its surface; and considering what I’d read from the Emperor’s Codex, it begged some worrying questions.

“I heard the Lords of Terror fetch a high price for their power and knowledge,” I mused out loud. “How am I expected to repay their hospitality? What payment will they expect?”

I expected a thousand answers from my mother. Souls, sorrow, blood, pain, the list went on. The kind of payment I thought would please nightmares older than the current mankind.

Instead, she answered with a single word. One that somehow sounded more ominous than all other possibilities.

“Tests.”

I squinted at her. “Tests?”

“You are a Tlacatecolotl, an owl-fiend of the Underworld. The Lords of Terror know that you will spread fear and nightmares. This makes them well-disposed towards our kind… if you can live up to their standards.” Mother marked a short pause as we soared above a river of lava. “Only three kinds of people leave Xibalba in one piece, my son. The bold… the lucky…”

She looked over her shoulder, her eyes cold and ominous.

“And the demons.”

And to survive, I would have to become all three.

_______________________________________________________________

I couldn’t tell how long we flew. Hours? Days? Time passed strangely when soaring above a land of death.

If I had to describe this region of Tlalocan, I would say we were flying above an old oven. Great plains stretched before us; an endless desert of cinders, molten glass, and fossilized ashes. Everything that could burn in this place already had. Nothing remained.

Nothing but grayness and the silence.

The latter became overwhelming as we progressed. A world was a living thing; and even dead, Tlalocan remained a noisy place. The thunder in the sky; the crackling of ashes on the ground; the distant growls of angry volcanos… all these sounds once formed a symphony in the background. Discordant, yet always present.

No more. I heard no other sound except for the flapping of our wings. Not even the whisper of a burning wind.

At some point, the rain of ash suddenly stopped falling.

It happened so quickly that I hardly noticed at first. The clouds cleared, leaving naught but Tlaloc’s distant blue sun shining alone amidst a dreary sky. The everlasting tempest of flames and cinders had stopped in front of an invisible line.

The sight sent a chill course through my spine. The fiery rains were the will of Tlaloc himself. The ceaseless anger of a god far older than the living world. How could he not exercise his power over a place inside his own realm?

I would expect the Burned Men to flock to such a haven. They did not. I saw no ruined settlement, no city of the wicked dead, or even a hut in which to hide. None of Tlalocan’s denizens had dared to colonize the gray desert.

This region was no sanctuary.

The air grew thicker too. Heavier. The temperature dropped in spite of the harsh sunlight, an otherworldly chill overcoming the searing heat of Tlaloc’s volcanic realm. The dunes of ashes flattened beneath us, as if they were afraid to stand out. Everything had become gray. The sky, the air, the land… all except for one landmark.

A black blot stood in the middle of the horizon. An indistinct mountain, or a tower perhaps? I could not tell what it was.

“Is that…” My own words sounded muffled, my voice choked by the oppressive atmosphere into mere whispers. “Is that it?”

Mother answered with a short nod. The landscape around us slowly changed into strange and unsettling sights.

First, we flew over a canyon filled with the fossilized remains of dead scorpions. Then a great red ring of long dried blood. Finally, we soared past a disgusting river of yellow pus.

Xibalba, the House of Fright, welcomed us soon after.

I heard its call long before its great pyramid came into view. Its overwhelming malevolence hung in the air like a cloud of pestilence over a grave. That sense of dread, of bottomless malice… I had only ever encountered anything similar once before. The moment when I first glimpsed at the ancient terror inside the sulfur flame.

Xibalba did not look too impressive at first glance. It was far smaller than Yohuachanca’s capital and utterly lacking in splendor. Long streets and crossroads of black obsidian stretched between empty houses of ancient stone. The city’s only noticeable landmark was a polished obsidian pyramid in its center. Even that one appeared smaller than the Nightlords’ Blood Pyramid.

But the longer I looked at Xibalba, the more unsettling it became. The houses were abandoned, yet perfectly maintained and polished. When I looked at a building and blinked, it was gone as if it had never existed; an empty road now appeared in its place. Xibalba’s fountains produced no water. There were no fortified walls to protect the city, nor moats nor watchtowers. Its great stone gates lay wide open, daring visitors to step inside.

Its streets were crowded too, but not by men nor beasts. Hundreds, if not thousands of white statues sat on its roofs or stood in the shadow of its empty houses. All of them were faceless and featureless. Some struck poses. Others appeared frozen in the middle of a dance. A few stretched in ways no man should. Most simply waited in place like chalk pillars.

All of them were staring at us. Their eyeless heads were turned in our direction, as if they’d been expecting our coming.

I was home.

I couldn’t explain it. This place frightened me. The human part of me dreaded it on an instinctual, primal level. This was a city of evil so foul that not even the Burned Men would approach it. A monument to terror forbidden to mortals.

But the owl… the owl within me felt drawn to the structure, the way a bird might recall the nest from which it took its first flight. An alien sense of nostalgia overwhelmed me. I had never stepped foot in Xibalba, whether in flesh or in dreams, but it welcomed me all the same.

Mother did not enter the city, however. She landed in the gray desert before its silent gates. A dozen benches lined up along the road, alongside four strange totems rising from the ashen landscape: an owl-shaped scarecrow with tattered wings stretched wide in silent exaltation; a trihorn-sized spider wrapped in a cocoon of fossilized webbing; a faceless, crowned woman made of red marble; and the shattered statue of a beheaded bat.

I sensed power coming from all of these strange statues, except for the last. The sight of a broken bat filled my heart with joy, but somehow, it seemed strangely out of place. Like a defaced tombstone.

“These are totems that can travel into the Underworld,” I said upon landing. “The spider, the owl, the bat… and the faceless dead.”

Queen Mictecacihuatl informed me that no bat totem had graced the Land of the Dead Suns in centuries, and only its statue was broken beyond repair. This seemed relevant somehow.

“Quite the mystery, is it not?” Mother noted upon regaining her human form. “You will find the answer inside Xibalba.”

“Which means you have found it,” I replied. I let go of my carrying frame and shed my owl guise for arms and legs. “Why not tell me now?”

“True knowledge is earned, not shared.” Mother waved a hand at the owl totem. “Bury your belongings at the owl totem’s feet. Do not carry anything that can be used against you inside Xibalba. Do not sit on the benches either. You would soon regret it.”

I would have guessed as much. Approaching the spider altar caused my flesh to itch as if insects crawled beneath my skin, whereas the human one caused an invisible weight to fall upon my chest. Only the owl totem alone did not radiate an aura of hostility.

It took me a while to bury my carrying frame and its contents, even with the Doll spell. I felt a hundred gazes watching me as I worked. Either the faceless statues were alive, or some other creatures hid among their numbers. Once I’d finished, I looked up at my Mother, waiting for her to guide me.

“Listen well, my son.”

My back tensed like a bowstring. Mother’s voice had deepened and turned somber. Her next words would carry great weight.

“Once your soul enters Xibalba, you will not be able to escape it until you have completed all of its trials,” she warned me. “Whenever you fall asleep, you will be dragged back to the House of Fright; and if you fail its tests, you will never leave it.”

Most would have gulped upon hearing this. I simply offered a sharp nod. After all I’d gone through since the Night of the Scarlet Moon, such dangers no longer frightened me.

“The city contains six houses, each of them ruled by two Lords of Terror,” Mother carried on. “You will be brought to one of them the moment you step through the gates. Xibalba’s masters will put you through cruel tests. Conquer all six of them, and you will be allowed inside the pyramid and its ballcourt. If you want to leave Xibalba, you will have to win a game there.”

I crossed my arms and held her gaze. “Is Father suffering in one of these houses?”

“No, of course not,” Mother reassured me. She sounded almost insulted by the idea. “Once you leave a house of trials, many paths will appear before you. One will lead to my domain inside the city, where we can meet in relative safety. Itzili and I will be waiting for you there.”

So far so good. I did wonder what could pass for ‘safe’ in a place so malevolent. “What of the other paths?”

“They will lead you to another house of trials. You will have to find your own path to my sanctuary.”

“Would it be too much to ask for a map?” I quipped. Mother did not bother commenting on it. “What kind of tests can I expect?”

“Even if I was allowed to tell you, it would do you no good. The Lords of Terror have had an eternity to refine their traps. The tests change with each visitor.” Mother shrugged her shoulders. “However, know that success will not go unrewarded. The Lords of Terror know powerful spells and terrible secrets. Forbidden sorceries that can harm the Nightlords and bring ruin to their servants. Pass their tests and you shall obtain their blessings.”

Spells that could harm the Nightlords.

The events of last night flared in the back of my mind. I recalled the Jaguar Woman’s grip on my shoulders. The words she shrieked into my ears.

We own you. We own you. We own you.

I tried to imagine a different night. I pictured myself tearing the Jaguar Woman apart with powerful magic. I imagined her burning and burning in front of her cursed flame. What a sweet thought. If only history had been so kind.

If I’d been stronger, if I’d wielded more powerful magic, Lady Sigrun would not have died. Guatemoc would not have perished. Eztli would not have become a vampire hungering for death’s sweet release. So many things would have changed.

Power would not let me change the past, but it would let me prevent further tragedies. It would allow me to destroy all of my enemies. The Nightlords, the vampires, all their priests and accomplices. All of them. My spells would knock their pyramids down and teach them the meaning of terror. I would tear apart the Jaguar Woman with my bare hands, put Yoloxochitl through the same torments she inflicted on so many innocents, and drag the others into the sun to burn.

One day, I told myself. One day, I would piss on their ashes.

After mulling over these vengeful fantasies, I faced the gates of Xibalba. The House of Fright and its secrets awaited me. They would come at a cost. I knew I would bear new scars by the time I left it behind me. Only one question still haunted me.

“Will it be worth it?” I whispered.

Mother’s eyes softened a brief instant, so quick I almost failed to notice. “I promise you this, my son: you will leave Xibalba as a powerful sorcerer or not at all. Once you conquer this city, you will be ready to confront Tlaloc himself.”

That was all I needed to hear.

I stepped into the House of Fright, and its walls swallowed me whole.

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